The Everlasting Rose (The Belles, #2)(28)

Camille, this is what I tried to tell you when I last saw you, but there wasn’t enough time. You are your generation’s aether. This is why Sophia has put a higher price on your head. She wants to use you, the way she’s using me. She even intends to combine our blood, to see what that yields her. She thinks the strongest Belle ever made. The guards will not kill you if they capture you. She needs us to populate her garden because ultimately she wants to find a way to sell many of the Belles in Trianon Square and will bleed us dry to do so. I keep hearing her say, “One for every household.”

I’ve sent along my Belle-book with more details on the matter. Commit it all to memory, then burn the book. No one other than Belles must ever know all the inner workings. This information cannot fall into the wrong hands.

You need to bring your sisters together, but be careful, Sophia has spies everywhere. More when I can.

—A.

I press the paper to my chest, the weight of her words holding my breath inside.

“What do you want to do?” Rémy asks.

The ship jerks. A baby pram being pushed by a woman crashes onto its side. Rémy races over to help her turn it upright and rescue the baby from the ground. The baby cries, the pitch of it searing through me, then blossoming an idea.

I tuck my hand into my pocket where the poison bottle always sits like a dangerous treasure. What if Belle babies could be born without their arcana? What if they could be healthy—and Sophia unable to use them?

I think of Valerie. She worked in the Belle-nursery, raising the new Belles with the nurses. She knows how we’re born, how we develop. If those Belle babies are born without their arcana, maybe they can be healthy and like everyone else, and will be unable to be used and sold.

Valerie might know exactly how to stop that part of Sophia’s plan. We could work together to determine how to use the precise amount of this poison in the right way to kill arcana—how to save those Belle babies from this fate.

I read the letter again. It doesn’t feel real. Hate simmers inside me, sharp, hot, and prickling. Arabella’s words are tinder for the fire inside me.





“Last port ahead.” A bell rings and a man stalks through the ship’s underbelly. “Half an hourglass until docking.”

Edel yawns and stretches out her arms. The teacup dragons hiccup and startle with annoyance.

“Get up,” I whisper to her. “We need to talk.”

She’s sluggish.

“How do you feel?” I ask.

“I’ll be better when we get on land,” she mutters.

“Arabella sent a message.”

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“No time to argue.” I hand her Arabella’s letter.

She unfurls the paper. Her eyes grow bigger and bigger as she reads, the words soaking in. She whispers the words aether and sold and everlasting rose. “How can any of this be true?”

“It’s all in her Belle-book.” I show her the cover. “She’s put in clippings from old Belle-manuals and detailed everything.”

She runs her fingers over the book, their white tips purpled with cold.

“While we’re here, I want to get Valerie, too. I need her help,” I say.

“I don’t understand any of this,” she says.

“I don’t know all the details, but Valerie must. Once we find her, she can explain.”

“Carondelet! Prepare to disembark.”

Outside the circular windows, the sun spills buttery-orange rays across the water, lightening the dark waves to blue.

I refasten the ribbon leashes around the teacup dragons’ necks and feed them tiny squares of salted pork. Ryra sits atop my hood. Happy and full, the others climb onto my shoulders, hooking their talons into my traveling cloak. I adjust the royal emblem Arabella gave me back at the palace—a dragon with a chrysanthemum hooked around its tail—that announces me as a favored reptilian merchant to the queen.

“Ready?” Rémy asks, taking a deep breath and putting on his mask.

“I have to be.” I gaze around, wondering if others will put on masks, if that’s the fashion here. “Should we wear these? Or will they attract more attention?”

“I don’t have a choice,” he says.

“If you would let me change you—”

“We don’t have time to argue,” he replies as the crowd moves forward.

I look at Edel. Her cheeks are clammy with the sheen of seasickness. “Can you hold a glamour until we find out if masks are popular here?”

“I think so,” she grumbles.

We hold hands, close our eyes, and call our arcana. My skin goes cold, the frost-laced wind now inside us as well as outside. Edel makes herself look like Du Barry—dark hair and a round face and beautiful full figure. I think of Maman again, assuming her outer appearance, but with deep black skin.

Rémy gawks like he did the first time I used a glamour.

“It’s still me,” I whisper.

“I know,” he claims, though his eyes say otherwise. “I’m just getting used to it is all.”

We walk onto the deck. Rich courtiers crowd the front with their servants at their sides toting children and boxes stacked like pastel patisserie treats.

“I wonder if there’ll be more guards in Carondelet than Metairie,” a wealthy woman says while adjusting her large hair-tower. A sleeping teacup koala shifts higher into her strands, snuggling in to avoid the growing wind.